


The Hardest Thing

by kiriya



Series: Post-Series Xing Collection (Starring Greed) [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Cool Guys Have Feelings Too, Gen, Greed is Alive, Post-Series, Strong Language, Xing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:46:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiriya/pseuds/kiriya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greed is resurrected after The Promised Day. He and Alphonse are both having trouble reconciling it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hardest Thing

Greed hears the door creak open and the sound of footsteps. He groans in irritation, and presses his pillow to his ears. It's not Ling or any of his hoity-toity Imperial ass-lickers. They barge in his room impolitely (Ling usually has some overly chipper, obnoxious greeting for him). Neither of them just open the door a bit and slip through. It's not Lan Fan, the sounds of her steps are uniform, like a metronome, the same interval of time between each one. It's not a servant either, unlike any of the aforementioned people, they  knock. 

"Greed?"

Greed sits up, and sees a young blonde Amestrian standing at the foot of his bed.  For a moment, Greed's mind fails him and thinks,   _Who the fuck?_ ,  but a few  synapses in his brain snap back together  and Greed remembers Pinnochio is a real boy now. 

Alphonse Elric isn't an enormous, hollow suit of armor anymore, but one-hundred sixty-five centimeters of squishy flesh. 

It's surreal, another mini wake-up call that he isn't in Kansas anymore.  To Greed, less than a week ago, the kid was  intimidating  enough to make even the toughest men quake in fear, even though he was disparately equipped with the voice of a mild   child. To Alphonse, five years had gone by, and the kid wasn't a kid anymore, but a man (and a pretty damn handsome man  at that).  More importantly, the man standing before Greed watched him die.

"What do you want?" Greed asks, straight to chase. 

Alphonse looks perturbed by his brashness, because Alphonse is like The Xingese those  who give a damn about manners and being polite. As if he'll get a nice, companionable  _Hi, How are you?_   out of Greed .  Greed and Alphonse were not friends, and the former homunculus rather skip past the awkward  pleasantries  ( _Remember when I kidnapped you and threatened to take you apart if you didn't spill your dirty, little soul-transmuting secrets. Oh, and how about when my older-but-also-younger brother possessed you and tried to kill your brother and me? Haha, good times_. ). There's no point pretending this is a social call. 

"I just came here to apologize." Alphonse says.

Greed stays silent. 

"- ... For earlier today?"

"Oh. That." At the memory, Greed frowns. When Alphonse learned of the homunculus's return and saw him for himself, the kid ... snapped a little...   
  
People just didn't come back from the dead. It was a truth The Elric Brothers knew too well, one too personal to refute.  

"Dead people stay dead! It's impossible!" he had yelled. He'd never seen the mild-mannered Elric brother lose control. "You told me theirs no such thing as no such thing, but you're wrong! I know you are. You can't just become human. Not after Nina. You can't come back, not ever. Not after Mom. Not after Teacher."

Nobody made a move to calm him down, but Greed could see his was trembling. Mei, Ling, and Lan Fan were smart enough to  anticipate  shock, disbelief, and maybe a little anger at their lack of regard for the laws of nature. Ling was trusted to use the power of the Philosopher's stone wisely, to help his father and his country, and he didn't. Instead, despite the cautionary tale that was his friends, the Elric brothers, Ling committed The Ultimate Selfish Aact, and brought back his friend from the dead. 

_"I've spent all my life in service to my country." _   
_   
"I've given up so much to get here. My love, my safety, my image, my own body."_

_ "I didn't feel complete without you, Greed."  _

_ "Just once, I wanted to do something selfish." _

However, no one expected the severe reaction Alphonse had. Shaking like he was naked in a blizzard, muttering to himself like a demented old man. Greed could see the infamous night they tried to bring their mother back behind his wide, glassy golden eyes. Greed made a move to calm him down, but he didn't think it helped. Mei came after you. She put her hand on his shoulder and rubbed soothing circles on his back. She gently led to the Infirmary, where they were more professionally equipped to soothe him. 

"Don't need to," Greed replies to the man's apology curtly. "'s not your fault."

"It's just seeing you this morning, alive, human," Alphonse continues, "It brought back a lot of old feelings. Ones I put to rest a long time ago."

"Yeah, figured."

"I also wanted to thank you, for calming me down."

"Yeah, well, a couple of guys that used to work for me used to go through shit like that all the time," Greed told him, thinking about the terrible state he found his chimera in when he first broke them out of The Fifth Lab. During the first six months of their employment (if you could really call it that at the time), Greed constantly had to pull them out of panic attacks that were a lot worse from what Al this morning. One moment, they'd be fine. The next moment, they'd be seized by fear that the military would find them again. He'd have to reassure them the military had no idea where they were, that he could trust them, and that they were safe with him. _Everything would be okay_. It wasn't pretty, and if you asked him in his first life if it were true, he'd deny it.

"Was it the Devil's Nest?"

Greed  involuntarily  winces at the name. He should have kept mouth shut. Sharing is Caring. Greed's reaction doesn't go unnoticed by the blonde. Alphonse thinks it's an invitation to sit down on his bed. Great. He planned to stick around. 

"I'm sorry." Alphonse says again. 

"What is wrong with you?" Greed snaps, "Stop apologizing for shit that isn't your fault."

"But it is," Alphonse insists, "At least partly... Martel. She was inside me. Two of you - one was part dog - told me to get her out of there, to keep her safe, but I couldn't do it. I failed.  She wanted to come help you. She fought me 'til the very end, but I wasn't strong enough. I couldn't hold her back. She... She tried to attack Bradley and-" He pauses, taking a deep breath. Alphonse looks at Greed, whose eyes have glassed over.

It takes every ounce of Greed's self-control to contain himself. When he let himself reconcile the events of his first and second life, he wondered if Martel met the same demise as the others. He tried to remember her death, but couldn't. Greed had hung on to the possibility... But Martel wouldn't want to see him, he thought. She would blame him for everything that had taken place that day when Bradley's raided the Nest. 

Greed doesn't know  whether  or to be relieved. Any hope he had that she was still alive is crushed, but now Greed can make peace with the knowledge didn't hold him responsible for the other's death. That she was loyal to the very end. That maybe it wasn't his fault. 

"...I-" 

What the hell is he supposes to say? Thank you? That what he told him is better than not knowing? It's not his fault? That Alphonse did everything that he could and Greed's grateful for that? That Greed gets it? That every night in Amestris, he dreamt of a million different ways he could have saved them? 

How can he? When every ounce of  dignity  Greed has left inside is screaming at him to tell this soft motherfucker that people die all the time and to stop being such a fucking pussy about it, because there's nothing either of them can do about it?

"Sorry." Alphonse says,  again . He wipes the tears from his eyes with his sleeve. Gross. "I didn't mean to dig up old feelings for you, too ."

"Yeah, whatever." He grumbles, grimacing. "Just forget we ever had this conversation. In fact, do me a big favor and forget this morning, too. I get it. Your mom, who was probably the light of your life and everything right in the world, couldn't come back from the dead. Hohenheim wanted nothing more than to be human, so he could grow old and die with you. So why does a deadbeat douchebag like me with nothing left get to come back, and get to be human on top of that?" 

"Don't say that. That's not what I-"

"Save it. I'm not a good person, alright? You don't need to tell me I'm not. I've  _killed_ ,  stole, fought, and fucked my way through two centuries of living. Took what I want when I wanted it, because everything was mine. Everything was: want, take, have. Even people. I couldn't give a damn about anyone but myself. So, yeah, why the fuck do I get to come back when your mom's still six feet under? How come I get the thing your father spent eternity searching for just handed to me? I don't deserve this."

"How can you say that?" Alphonse says, frowning at him. "What you did on the Promised Day? To Father? You could have lived forever but instead, you gave it up to save Ling, to save the world."

He sneers. "No, I didn't. Ed did. He's the one who finished my old man off, right? That must have been a pretty sight."

"He couldn't have done it without you."

"It doesn't matter. The resilient bastard would have found a way. That's what heroes do." 

"You  are  a hero." 

"I  _was_.  For one moment, I was. After lifetimes of taking and taking trying to feed this insatiable tempest inside of me, I was satisfied. Ling, Ed, - even Lan Fan- had given me something I never knew I needed. And I had this moment of clarity that this was my end. That I was complete. So I fucking did it. I sacrificed myself for Ling. I stuck it to Dad. And I was done, ... But not anymore."

Dying was an easy choice, Greed thought, go out with a bang, be remembered as a hero. Living was the hard choice. He didn't know how to act good, how not to make an ass of himself and still... be _him_ (if he could even suss out who that was). That's why closed the book, not because of some delusions of heroism, but because his story was finished. It was all wrapped in a nice little bow... until someone choose to pull at it. 

The hardest thing in this world is live in it. That must make bringing someone back from the dead... The Ultimate Selfish Act.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> An attempt to making something super contrived well-established and make sense for the further development of the character, who already had a good complete arch (feat. Shameless Buffy Quote), and incorporate it wth some themes of the show (C'mon Greed, giving up isn't the ~*HUMAN*~ way!).
> 
> EDIT: I re-beta'd this in 2018, because I'm a much better writer than I was too years ago.


End file.
